"Well, Dan, my darling!" said the other, "you're thought more of here
this day than the lot of 'em, though the place in a manner belongs to
them, and you're only a prisoner."

"Faix and that's what he's not, Martin; no more than yourself, nor so
likely, may-be. He's the traverser, as I told you before, and that's
not being a prisoner. If he were a prisoner, how did he manage to tell
us all what he did at the Hall yesterday?"

"Av' he's not a prisoner, he's the next-door to it; it's not of his own
free will and pleasure he'd come here to listen to all the lies them
thundhering Saxon ruffians choose to say about him."

"And why not? Why wouldn't he come here and vindicate himself? When you
hear Sheil by and by, you'll see then whether they think themselves
likely to be prisoners! No--no; they never will be, av' there's a ghost
of a conscience left in one of them Protesthant raps, that they've
picked so carefully out of all Dublin to make jurors of. They can't
convict 'em! I heard Ford, the night before last, offer four to one
that they didn't find the lot guilty; and he knows what he's about, and
isn't the man to thrust a Protestant half as far as he'd see him."

"Isn't Tom Steele a Protesthant himself, John?"

"Well, I believe he is. So's Gray, and more of 'em too; but there's a
difference between them and the downright murdhering Tory set. Poor Tom
doesn't throuble the Church much; but you'll be all for Protesthants
now, Martin, when you've your new brother-in-law. Barry used to be one
of your raal out-and-outers!"